dj bean

Fans get their wish, Bruins get their test

The Bruins’ motto for the playoffs should be a simple one, at least in the first round:

Don’t overlook a team that was better against you in the regular season.

It seems that if you rolled a die to determine the Bruins’ first-round playoff opponent, you would find the Club de Hockey logo on most of the sides. After a couple weeks of uncertainty as to who the B’s might face in the opening round, the oh-so-predictable answer was provided Saturday night. It’s the Canadiens.

Again.

As if the two first-round meetings in the last three years weren’t enough, the heated rivalry will once again extend past the 82-game schedule. Though they see a lot of each other in the playoffs, it’s unlikely any onlookers are complaining, After all that has taken place between the two teams this season, it’s a matchup in which hockey fans all over can take an interest, and Bruins fans were riding high following the 7-0 shutout on March 24.

Boston-Montreal. The trash-talking Bruins vs. the diving Habs. Toughness vs. finesse. The “criminal” captain vs. the, um, city who thought the B’s captain was a criminal. It’s undoubtedly the matchup that the fans want, but do the Bruins want it?

They would never say, and as professional athletes they carry the line of thinking that they should be able to beat anybody. Two things on that:

1.They can beat anybody.

2.The Canadiens are not the desired opponent.

The most recent memory Bruins fans have of Canadiens fans is seeing Carey Price skate to the Habs’ bench after allowing the Bruins’ fifth goal in that March 24 game, an Adam McQuaid tally. They remember the way the Canadiens fell behind in that game and redefined quitting. They remember Tim Thomas getting the shutout, his eighth of the season.

Memory, of course is an interesting thing. All one has to do is remember the entire season series to see that even a 700-0 Bruins’ win last month wouldn’t change the fact that the Canadiens have been able to dictate the play between the two teams in the majority of their meetings. The Bruins collapsed in the Jan. 8 game, blowing a 2-0 lead in the final 2:22 and losing in overtime. The March 8 game was ugly enough without taking the Max Pacioretty incident into consideration.

As for the 8-6 Bruins’ win in on Feb. 9, unfortunately for the Bruins, that one doesn’t exactly say anything about the playoffs, and they know it. Fight-nights like that contest don’t make their way to the postseason, so the high-scoring, high-penalty minute battle that the Bruins’ would win 10 out of 10 times will have to wait for the regular season next year.

Of course, the record vs. the Canadiens speaks for itself. In fact, the argument could be made that the Bruins’ biggest challenge to representing the East in the Stanley Cup finals could come in the first round with the Habs.

If the Bruins can get past the Canadiens – something that could take six or seven games – the tournament could actually regress in difficulty for the B’s. Here are the Bruins’ records vs. Eastern Conference playoff teams:

Notice that three teams beat the B’s the majority of the time, and those teams – the Canadiens, Sabres and Rangers -- are the No. 6, 7 and 8 seeds, respectively. If the Bruins can sink the Habs in Round 1, there is no way they could face the seventh-seeded Sabres in the following rond (in order for the Sabres to be in the second round, they would have to beat the No. 2 Flyers. They would face the No. 1 Capitals in the second round, and in the event that both the Capitals and Flyers didn’t advance to the second round, the Bruins would be the top remaining seed and play the Rangers). That means that if the Bruins can actually find a way to face one of the higher seeds, such as a Tampa Bay or a Philadelphia in the second round, they could end up having an easier time.

In order to do that, of course, they would need to actually get past the Canadiens. Will they do it in sweeping fashion like in 2009? That would be surprising, as the Canadiens have outperformed the B’s too much in the season series to be taken lightly in the playoffs.

One area in which the series could be made easier on the B’s is if Price’s recent TD Garden woes. Factoring in his last two starts in Boston (the Bruins’ only two wins against Montreal this season), the Habs’ netminder has allowed 13 goals. The Bruins may have not been able to get anything going in Montreal (0-2-1), but home-ice advantage could be their friend if Price proves incapable of handling the Garden.

The Bruins, meanwhile, will need to get the same great goaltending from Tim Thomas and hope that more than one line can produce at a time. They’ll need the likes of Milan Lucic (nine points in six games vs. MTL) Nathan Horton (seven points – five of which came Feb. 9 -- in five games vs. MTL), David Krejci (seven points in five games vs. MTL) and Patrice Bergeron (seven in five) to make things tough on Price regardless of where the game is played.

The Bruins may be the higher seed, but they should know better than to view the series as a slam-dunk. After all, the Bruins can’t go 2-3-1 in a playoff series like they did in the season series. Such a record spells elimination, and if it were to come in the first round, it would make for a most disappointing end to a promising season.

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